EXCLUSIVE: Company linked to Tom Quick buys building on Royal Palm Way

Darrell Hofheinz @PBDN_hofheinz

Wednesday

Mar 14, 2018 at 12:01 AMMar 14, 2018 at 3:53 PM

A company affiliated with Palm Beach real estate investor and financier Tom Quick has paid a recorded $14.75 million for a renovated Class A office building at 400 Royal Palm Way on so-called Bankers Row, according to courthouse records and other sources.

The sale price works out to about $536 per square foot.

Quick manages Kinsale Partners LLC, the Florida limited liability company that a source said bought the four-story, yellow-and-white building with 27,530 square feet at the corner of Cocoanut Row.

Built in 1966, the building was sold by CP 400 Royal Palm Way LLC, a company associated with Boca Raton-based Crocker Partners, which also managed the building. The sale closed Monday, and preliminary information about the deed was posted today on the Palm Beach County Clerk’s website.

The last sale recorded in property records for the building was in October 2004. That’s when Whalou Properties II LLC, a Delaware-based company, bought it for a recorded $11.35 million. In 2007, the name of Whalou Properties II LLC was changed to CP 400 Royal Palm Way LLC, state business records show. But courthouse documents don’t indicate exactly when Crocker Partners acquired the building or how much might have changed hands.

In 2012, Quick and Michael P. McCloskey paid a recorded $3.5 million for a complex of historic commercial buildings at the northwest corner of County Road and Seaview Avenue, where the Quick family has had a business presence for more than 30 years.

RELATED: Quick, McCloskey buy South County Road complex

For several years, one of the Royal Palm Way building’s anchors was a branch of CitiBank, which closed in October 2016 as part of a bank-wide strategy to reduce the number of its branches.

The former bank space on the east half of the ground floor has been leased to the Corcoran Group real estate agency, according to Corcoran Regional Senior Vice President Bill Yahn. That space will remain vacant until the agency remodels it and moves there from its longtime home across town in Royal Poinciana Plaza, said Yahn, who expects to relocate by August or September. Constance Thomas, senior director of Tower Commercial Real Estate in West Palm Beach, acted opposite Corcoran in the leasing deal.

Other ground-floor tenants include the Palm Beach Daily News, which rents office space, and the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce.

"It’s a valuable asset," said Thomas, who handled leasing for the building when Crocker Partners owned it. "It’s a prime signalized corner on a prime street and it’s got ample open parking, which makes it easy for tenants and their clients to come in and out."

The seller in this week’s sale was represented by the commercial real estate brokerage Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, better known as HFF, in Miami. Representing the seller were HFF’s Hermen Rodriguez, Ike Ojala and Tracey Goo, according to a source familiar with the deal.

That same team represented Crocker Parters in late October when it sold an office-and-retail building at 225 Worth Ave. for a recorded $30.7 million. A company affiliated with Frisbie Group, a Palm Beach real estate investment firm, bought that three-story, 50,017-square-foot building.

RELATED: Crocker Partners sells Worth Ave. building for $31 million

The rental rate in the building was most recently advertised at $47.50 per square foot on a standard "triple net" lease, with a total of 9,215 square feet available, according to a recent listing on LoopNet.com. Four spaces on the second and third floors were marketed at that rate for terms ranging from three to seven years.

About few years ago, the building completed a major renovation of its public areas, including the installation of white marble-tile floors.

Quick’s real estate holding company, First Palm Beach Properties, as well as a "family office" for the Quick family are housed in the South County Road complex at 230 S. County Road. That location was once home to Quick & Reilly, a pioneering discount brokerage firm co-founded in New York in 1974 by Quick’s father, the late Leslie C. Quick, and at one point managed by Tom Quick. He continued to be involved at the firm, along with a related company, when it was acquired by Fleet Securities. The firm later became part of Bank of America Corp.

Quick and a representative of Crocker Partners could not be immediately reached for comment.

RELATED: Bankers Row ranked ninth in U.S. for big-dollar rents

Royal Palm Way has long been known to locals as Bankers Row, the nickname referencing the financial institutions with offices on the four-block commercial artery, which begins just east of the Royal Park Bridge and continues to the beach.

A number of buildings have changed hands there over the past several years, most recently 231 Royal Palm Way, which is anchored by PNC Wealth Management. That 1973 Class A building with about 11,586 square feet was sold for a recorded $9.2 million in October by a Miami-based firm managed by Raul A. Pinto Hernandez. The buyer was a company associated with Rhode Island-based Procaccianti Cos., a family-run real estate investment business.

Side-by-side buildings at 230 Royal Palm Way and 240 Royal Palm Way changed hands in January 2016 for $21.45 million in a deal overseen by a federal bankruptcy court. That same month, a joint venture comprising Palm Beach-based investors paid a recorded $14 million for 221 Royal Palm Way and the J.P. Morgan Building at 205 Royal Palm Way. Later the same year, an office building at 250 Royal Palm Way sold for just under $17 million.

Class A buildings in downtown West Palm Beach have lately attracted financial-industry tenants from Bankers Row, including UBS. Other Royal Palm Way companies have reduced the size of their offices in Palm Beach.

But the street still ranks among the country’s most expensive for leasing office space. In November, it once again ranked ninth-priciest among 47 streets in U.S. markets analyzed by Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle, an international real-estate firm. Royal Palm Way’s rank was unchanged from the firm’s previous reports in 2015 and 2013.